1. Statement of the Technical Field
The inventive arrangements relate to multimode devices and more particularly to methods and systems for providing controlled access to hardware resources needed for mission critical applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Public safety personnel commonly make use of multiple devices for communication and data processing. For example, a public safety officer may be equipped with one or more of a land mobile radio (LMR), a cell phone, laptop, a tablet computer and so on. Advances in technology have made possible the creation of multimode devices that integrate the functionality of two or more such systems into a single device. In these types of devices, software applications frequently implement important functionality using limited hardware resources (e.g., buttons, knobs, speakers, displays, and processing resources) which must be shared with other applications. While these arrangements can work well in many scenarios, they will often contradict the mission critical expectations associated with public safety equipment. More particularly, a mission critical function may not be available when needed due to requested hardware resources being in use by another, possibly lower priority, function. Whether or not a particular function is deemed mission critical can vary in accordance with different operational scenarios and with different types of users.